


A Stage That Never Empties

by Carradee



Series: The Stage That Never Empties [2]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Legends - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Dark, Forced Pregnancy, Gen, Multi, Other, Resurrection, weird stuff is weird
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-11-09
Updated: 2016-11-09
Packaged: 2018-08-30 01:56:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 3
Words: 9,272
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8514232
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Carradee/pseuds/Carradee
Summary: Talon Karrde finds a young woman, named Zora, with a toddler and better knowledge of galactic events that happened during his youth than she does the ones that would've happened during her own.Quinlan Vos is annoyed with his daughter-in-law.These two things may be related.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This pulls from a lot of Legends canon stuff, slaps it together, adds some original stuff for the purpose of connecting threads that were left kinda hanging in what I know of Legends (and that help the entire scenario work), and is altogether _weird_.
> 
> I've been playing with this premise since…well, before all the prequel movies came out. (I actually predicted that Anakin killed Padmé via Force-choking, but there's no way to prove that now.) The story with this premise on FF.net has some significant problems and will be getting adjusted before or if I bring it over here, but I would like to do that at some point.
> 
> This is a different story than the one on FF.net.
> 
> I actually wanted to reread canon before I started writing this, but I know I'll change what I have, after I do that, and who says I only have to do one version of this sorta thing?
> 
> I also have no idea where I'm headed with it. If anywhere. I think it's just going to be stories that build the vision of this universe.
> 
> There will be no schedule; I'll just be posting chapters whenever I have 'em written.
> 
> So…have fun? XD Please let me know what you think! :)

There was something familiar about the young woman.

Talon Karrde gave her another glance-over but still couldn’t put his finger on it. Her blonde hair and general body type reminded him of Tahiri Veila, though she was at least a decade younger. The fatigue in her shoulders and ill fit of her flight suit held the quiet desperation of the downtrodden, made all the more heartbreaking by the toddler she carried in a sling on her back.

But it was her face that had caught his eye. Something about the shape, the bones…

She was standing to the side of the docking bay and seemed to be in search of work. From the protective arm she’d put out, blocking a space jockey from being able to touch the toddler, that wasn’t going well.

He approached, himself, and his stomach rolled as soon as he was close enough to catch the nature of the conversation. “Is there a problem?”

The spacer shrugged and smiled lightly. “Just making a business proposal to miss… I’m sorry, but what was your name?”

The blonde held herself with a casual readiness that bespoke competence or at least skill in feigning it, and she returned the smile. “Ten credits.”

Demanding payment for even the slightest information. He liked her already.

Talon tossed her a ten-credit chip, himself. “What could you do for me?”

The blonde caught the chip and checked it. “Mechanic or pilot.”

“Some of my tech’s older than you…” Talon stared at the child, who was perhaps two and staring at him with the owlish calm of an observant child several years older. The blonde reached back and touched her child’s leg, and the baby gave a little sigh and snuggled against her back, still watching him.

They _could_ just be quiet, observant types, but they reminded him all too much of the Force-sensitives that he and Shada smuggled away from those who would’ve delivered them to the Yuuzhan Vong to be killed.

This woman would’ve been a child during that war, and Force sensitivity was still considered dangerous.

He swallowed the lump in his throat.“You available for a job interview?”

“You can’t just expect her to walk off with you,” the space jockey scoffed, though he’d been trying to get her to let him do just that, with the baby. He turned his appeals to the woman herself. “You can’t walk off with them. Who knows what kind of people they are? You have no idea how much that little girl of yours would sell for in the open market.”

“One thousand credits,” the blonde replied, not missing a beat as she studied Karrde—further evidence that she was the type that did well in his employ. “Thanks for your concern, but it’s my risk to take.”

“You’re endangering your daughter!” the spacer insisted. “I’ll call security!”

“Do that,” the blonde said calmly. “I’ll be interviewing with a potential employer.”

Karrde smiled and started for where he’d left his corvette. “I’m Talon.”

“Zora,” the blonde said, after a moment. Possibly an assumed name.

He held up a ten-credit chip. “Your daughter?”

She hesitated, then shook her head. Not yet. If she or her child had been outed as a Force sensitive, that would be plenty of reason to hide.

“Just answer me this,” he said. “ _Is_ she yours?”

Something soft and sad and outright angry entered her eyes, though the last one seemed more directed at a memory than at him. “Yes.”

He tossed her the credit chip as payment for answering the question.

She caught it easily, studied it. “Satine.” She glanced at him and pocketed the chip. “Her name’s Satine.”

 

* * *

Talon introduced Zora to the Horns, of course. His particular line of work was too dangerous for someone with a small child. If Satine had a father, he would’ve considered it, but he wasn’t going to put her at significant risk of ending up an orphan.

Mirax smiled and cooed over the baby, who was so ridiculously well-behaved that the woman’s “Are you going to let her be trained as a Jedi?” didn’t surprise him.

Zora stared, looking very much like Mara Jade had at her age, when uncomfortable. After a few seconds, she asked, “Isn’t she a bit young for that?”

“For the modern Jedi Order, yes,” Corran said. “The Jedi Order of the Old Republic took babies.”

“Only with the parents’ permission,” Zora said, again reminding Karrde of Mara, when she’d oh-so-casually revealed Imperial intel. Force, he missed Mara.

“Up to two years old, right?” Corran asked, apparently fishing for something. Mirax sent an annoyed glance his way, so there was a story there. “And then up to age five could be an exception?”

Zora studied Jedi Master Corran Horn with a calm scrutiny that the man returned.

Corran glanced to Satine and frowned. “You’re…a historian?”

“Yeah, I’m lethal with a hydrospanner,” Zora said dryly.

From the truth ringing in her words, Talon suspected there was good reason she reminded him of Mara…although he couldn’t picture Mara of that age trusting herself with a baby.

Corran rubbed his chin. “What you need is a job that includes childcare when necessary but lets you move around. I’ll talk to my father-in-law. Booster can always use another mechanic—that is, if you aren’t a Hentz?”

Talon would have to look that family up.

“No,” Zora said promptly, but calmly enough that it might’ve been truth. “We’re Kenobi.”

And that in itself explained why she avoided use of her surname—and, perhaps, why she didn’t want to be a Jedi, herself.

* * *

Zora did, in fact, go to work for Booster Terrik on the _Errant Venture_. She was smart, competent, and ridiculously helpful with odd historical details that were as old as Talon himself. Her knowledge of modern events was far more shaky—seriously, how did she know more about the Stark Hyperspace War than she did about the Second Galactic Civil War?—but that didn’t detract from her usefulness. It made her a lot better at troubleshooting tech issues, since she understood the underlying hardware rather than relying on the interfaces and shortcuts.

Karrde sometimes offered her contracts, when he had tasks particularly well-suited to what Mara’s non-lethal talents had been. Sometimes she took them, like the information drop that went so bad that the extraction team found her taking refuge in the ruins of a booby-trapped temple that he hadn’t been able to find on any map, etched with glyphs that he was pretty sure were Sith.

Sometimes she refused, like the supply run that was getting swarmed by some weird little machines, though she identified them as buzz droids and gave advice on how to counter them.

Karrde was willing to think her just a historian who’d needed a clean break, but…

She was Force-sensitive and _trained_. She was discreet about it, but Karrde had much experience with the type. Mara had still been mostly the Emperor’s spy and assassin, back when he’d first hired and worked with her. Zora didn’t seem to have Mara’s anger issues, but he wouldn’t have been surprised to find out that she was spying for _someone_.

And she still niggled at him as familiar in a way he couldn’t place.

* * *

Quinlan Vos hadn’t spoken to his daughter since she was four years old. He’d seen her, but more in the news outlets than in person, since she’d ended up Someone Important. Important enough that it would only cause her harm to find out that her father played the sides of the Force like a Chance cube, her mother had been from the Fringe, and her brother was certified insane.

(Korto controlled his condition with medication—at least, he had up until the Yuuzhan Vong killed them both—but instincts warned Quinlan off asking Naksía if he’d gone back on them, after she’d resurrected them and he was afraid to ask whom else. Whatever she’d done had damaged her own mental health, and he was pretty sure that asking about Korto’s meds would be understood as asking about _hers_. In her current state, she’d lash out with Force lightning while insisting that she was _fine_.)

(It wasn’t Naksía’s fault she was as Gray as kriffing charcoal, and though he could contain her, he preferred avoiding her Darker side. It made him think of Tyrannus and therefore Khaleen, and even the decades without her hadn’t cured that ache.)

(Force, he still missed _Shylar_.)

Quinlan had been a Jedi Shadow, Kiffu Guardian, and a Sith Adept. None of those were particularly conducive to producing a particularly nice person, but Khaleen had loved him all the more for his shadows. Shylar…not so much. She’d loved him for the light, and that wasn’t the path he lived.

No, Khaleen had been a far better fit for him.

Sideous had taken her and Mirren and hidden them beyond even Quinlan’s ability to track down, and he’d felt Khaleen die.

It wouldn’t have been right to abandon his son for the sake of his daughter, so he’d let his allies track leads and hunted himself only when they found something solid enough to act on. That there were so damn few was both reassuring and distressing, for it meant Mirren was alive—but it also meant that she was getting forged into something Sideous wanted. He’d taken what little comfort he could in the fact that Khaleen wasn’t alive to see it.

The one time he found a target to raid, he discovered that his daughter wasn’t the only child pawn that Palpatine was building. Thus how he’d ended up with Palpatine’s _granddaughter_ in his clan. (He wasn’t sure what disturbed him more: That the mother had been one of Amidala’s handmaidens, or that she hadn’t even known her biological parentage until Palpatine somehow forced her to have Naksía. Eirtaé had never offered details, and he’d never asked.)

By the time Quinlan finally found _his_ daughter, she was a teenager and fully indoctrinated by Palpatine. When he could, he did some behind-the-scenes wetwork to help her survive. Tholme and Aayla would’ve spun in their graves to see it, he was sure.

When the Emperor died, he’d dared hope she could break free of the Darkness, at least enough to reach the shadows. He’d been ever so elated when she’d ended up in the Light.

There was a window when he could’ve contacted her without repercussions, when she was working with Talon Karrde, but he’d been busy interfering with some Anzati who were plotting to go after the Skywalker kid. His chance to meet his daughter, and he’d _missed_ it.

Years passed, and she married Skywalker and turned out _happy_ , and he hadn’t been about to throw a wrench in that.

One day, he’d realized that Korto and Mirren were older than most of his friends had been when they’d died, and someone probably needed to make sure Skywalker’s Order knew about the secrets that the Jedi Shadows had kept to themselves. He and Korto had headed for Yavin IV.

And then the Yuuzhan Vong invaded, sending the galaxy went ass over teakettle _again_ , and both he _and_ Korto died before they could reach the new Jedi Order.

Maybe a decade later, he’d woken up to see Naksía grinning at him as if she hadn’t become one of the weird things that he’d once dragged back to the Temple for containment.

He’d been annoyed, but he’d honestly experienced worse than getting brought back to life in a younger edition of his old body. Naksía had sworn up and down that she’d not do it again without good reason, and then promptly brought back both her husbands (which made him tempted to press her for what she knew that he didn’t, but that wouldn’t work).

Chak wasn’t even Force-sensitive, and she’d nearly destroyed her own mind while finding his in the Force. That was one reason why, when he started coming across other no-longer-dead people, Quinlan was pretty sure there were a few different resurrection techniques going on.

The other reason? She was the only person he knew of who would dare use Palpatine’s method to bring back a _Jedi_.

Nobody seemed to know who all was causing the resurrections or _why_ , eiher, so he played as clueless as anyone else as the old Jedi Order reformed and promptly started getting teeth kicked in by also-resurrected Darksiders and Sith. The entire Darth Caedus mess and how the new Jedi Order differed from the old one didn’t particularly help, either, with how much the galaxy and public perception of Jedi differed from what was commonly remembered.

The galaxy was ripe to manipulate into a purge of the Force-sensitives—again—but if Palpatine and those with him were the first to engage folks with, say, records and reason for the media to take their cause, they’d sabotage their own platform. The result was a war between Jedi and Sith that looked very much like two syndicates wrestling over turf, to anyone who didn’t know what was going on.

Very few un-resurrected people knew what was going on. It was safer for all involved, that way, and far easier to avoid being tossed in a psychiatric ward.

Everything had been going along okay—confusing as kriff, as no-longer-dead people _kept showing up_ , but okay—until no-longer-dead folks from the _new_ Jedi Order started showing up. He’d seen the holo of Anakin Solo getting his ass kicked in two individual spars, which had been part of a bargain that they’d accept his Knighthood if he could win two out of three. Quinlan was pretty sure one of the teens who’d fought him had actually survived Order 66 and made it to Knight, but she didn’t talk about it and he wasn’t about to push. The other one had died as a junior Padawan in Operation Knightfall, younger than Anakin Solo had been at death, so he figured the bet had been fair enough.

People assumed that Quinlan had died during the Empire, too, and he didn’t bother correcting them. That was easier than dealing with the question of why the Jedi from the new Order didn’t have a clue who he was.

Of course, now _Mirren_ had shown up, and the High Council in its wisdom had decided a Imperial Hand turned Jedi Master would probably fit quite well as a partner for Quinlan, who nobody seemed to want to send alone. Some didn’t trust him; some were apparently just concerned about leaving him in solitude after the shit of the war and what had followed. And _somebody_ had to introduce Mara to the branches of the old Order.

Which was why he was currently waiting for his daughter, who he was supposed to introduce to the various branches of the old Jedi Order and how they were applied. She would probably recognize him, realize who he was. Families were outright _normal_ in the new Order.

The old Order was _saying_ conciliatory things, but enough prominent Masters believed attachments had outright caused the current mess of the galaxy that overt and explicit recognition of his own attachments could get him tossed before the Reconciliation Council and collared (or executed for ‘resisting arrest’) before the sympathizers could intervene.

So…did Mirren buy what she’d been told at face value, or had she noticed the political undercurrent?

Quinlan glanced about from where he was sitting in front of a pub with a few outside tables that were conveniently shadowed and not easily viewed from the street. Not a secure meeting place at all, but it would give Mirren plenty of options to get away if she decided she didn’t want to have anything to do with him.

She was a few minutes late. Not unreasonable, since procedure would’ve been to tell her about the appointment at the last minute, and then she would’ve doubtless wanted to scope out the situation first. She’d make an excellent Shadow, but that was close enough to what Sideous had made of her to potentially give her an aversion to that particular type of Sentinel.

He’d already ordered food, since he didn’t want her to have to stick around for too long. Mara Jade Skywalker had been dead for long enough that nobody was likely to see the young woman and assume ‘Resurrected fifty-seven-year-old Master!’, but ‘unlikely’ wasn’t ‘impossible’.

He opened one bottle of Corellian Ale and poured himself a shot.

“Bit early for that, no?”

Quinlan didn’t flinch, but it was a near thing. She’d approached him naturally, without any Force techniques. He hadn’t expected that.

In lieu of answering her question, he poured her a a shot, too. “There’s food for us both.”

She eyed him, then slid into the other seat, which he’d left angled in a comparable position to his own. “You in the habit of wining and dining strangers?” she asked.

Maybe she wouldn’t notice their relationship. Kiffar weren’t known for producing telepathic redheads. If she never thought to check…

He passed her the shot of ale. “You still using the name Mara?”

She accepted it, though she didn’t drink. “Jade.”

Khaleen had been Jade Eyes, sometimes, when the situation warranted code names.

“Is something wrong?”

He shrugged and served himself from the sampler platters. “Hungry.”

She was still studying him. If she’d noticed the relationship, she’d given no sign.

Quinlan smiled at his food. Mirren was going to be a pleasure to work with.

 


	2. Chapter 2

Quinlan Vos was perilously close to hating Anakin Solo.

He was sympathetic at first, when the kid showed up among the rapidly-expanding population of mysteriously resurrected persons. Some had been annoyed by how the kid bitched about how he was a knight, not an apprentice—but how was he supposed to realize how ignorant he was? His Order had been founded by someone with a fast-tracked education designed to enable him to stand against a single, particular enemy. There hadn’t been time or even opportunity for Luke to know the full breadth of what had constituted Jedi education, in the old Order.

The High Council, in a rare moment of wisely clear communication, had explained that they were concerned about the gaps in Solo’s knowledge, that they didn’t want him to end up dead again due to some detail that they wouldn’t think to point out to a Knight, like the nuances of lightsaber construction that had cost the Queen Mother of Hapes her arm. (Quinlan wasn’t sure how they’d known that particular detail of modern history; he assumed he wasn’t the only one who’d either survived or been back for a lot longer than he let others assume.)

The Council made Solo a deal: He would face someone his age in open spar. If he won two out of three matches, they’d accept his knighthood. If he didn’t, he’d be assigned as a Padawan to a Master of their choosing.

Solo had thought that fair enough, probably expecting to win thanks to his extensive combat experience with the Yuuzhan Vong war. He didn’t have the context to understand how much leeway they were giving him, either—but Quinlan knew from his own experience that it could be better to be ignorant about just how much special treatment you received. An unacknowledged advantage was a lot harder to leverage against you than an acknowledged one.

To nobody’s surprise but Solo’s, he lost.

(There was a holo. It was hilarious.)

Apparently he hadn’t even been trained in combat, just a few youngling-level basics and ’trust the Force’, which made Quinlan wonder how the kriff Yoda had expected Luke to defeat the emperor. By getting himself killed and thereby pissing off Vader so much that he murdered his master in a fit of rage?

But getting upset with Yoda wouldn’t help anything. (If the little green troll was among the no-longer-dead, nobody who knew was admitting it.)

Solo only fought two of the three matches, but he had the maturity to recognize that he’d lost and stopped there. Good for him—the person scheduled as his third partner had died an Initiate and wasn’t even a Padawan yet.

When Quinlan found himself working with the girl who’d beaten Solo, the one he was pretty sure had survived into the Empire, he asked if she thought the Initiate could’ve beaten Solo.

She’d given him an incredulous glance. “Pax can beat _me_ , sometimes.”

That was a yes, then.

So he’d felt sorry for the kid, who was having to learn things he’d had no idea he even needed to know. Quinlan had been there a few times, thanks to getting mind-kriffed or drugged.

That sympathy had continued when he’d found out that Padawan Learner Anakin Solo had been assigned to Jedi Master Qui-Gon Jinn, probably because they both needed filling in about the collapse of the Old Republic.

But then he’d learned that Qui-Gon was ignoring the class plan that the Council had made for Solo, _and Solo was enabling him_.

Having to watch Obi-Wan take responsibility and make excuses for Qui-Gon’s neglectful style of ‘training’ had been bad enough. Qui-Gon played the ‘plausible deniability’ game too well to prove it, but Quinlan wasn’t the only one who noticed.

Frankly, his sympathy for the kid probably would’ve survived even that, had he and Solo met under _any_ other circumstances.

As it was, he was hunched against a wall of a little-traversed corner in a hospital, muffling the kid and nearly breaking a few of his bones to restrain him from running after a Darksider that he was _not_ equipped to handle.

Quinlan was. Quinlan was at the hospital to _stop_ said Darksider.

Quinlan was having to sit there as said Darksider raped the woman who’d interfered before Skorr killed Solo.

“What profit is there in killing him, my lord?” she’d asked, the tremor in her voice making him want to hurt Skorr badly.

Quinlan had been getting a feel for the situation at the time, wanting to make sure there weren’t further guests or risks that needed taking care of. He thanked the Force he had, since—

“You don’t need to be _alive_ for him to get the message.”

“You think Tholme will let him near my body?” she’d answered, as lightly and curiously as if she didn’t understand the threat.

Skorr had growled and dragged her off, leaving the dazed Anakin Solo for Quinlan to haul into hiding so he didn’t get Khaleen’s message ‘delivered’ and get her killed, too.

The assault told him that at least part of the ‘message’ was probably a baby—probably even a half-Anzati child, since that would be most effective as an insult to a Kiffu Guardian. Khaleen would want to terminate, but between Jedi rules and Kiffar mores, her conscience would interfere, out of concern for _his_ conscience.

Her conscience would be giving her a hard time about keeping it, too, because she wouldn’t dare ask him to raise an Anzati or abandon a child, herself.

Skorr got far enough away for Quinlan to risk loosening his grip on Solo. Rather than discussing the situation like a reasonable being, Solo took off deeper into the hospital.

“Mom! Dad!” he yelled, as if that would help anything.

Oh, Quinlan wanted to _punch_ the kid.

* * *

Talon Karrde didn’t do much solitary travel himself, anymore—he had friends whose grandkids were older than little Satine, who’d just turned four—but even Shada hadn’t so much as glared at him when he asked her to let him take this one.

The med center bustled with activity, but he’d apparently been put on the list as an approved visitor. That meant at least one of the two he was here to see were conscious and coherent enough to make such decisions, and a few questions confirmed that they were ready to leave with him.

Still, considering both Han and Leia Solo had vanished in the middle of a lunch date a few weeks ago and even _he_ hadn’t been able to find a trace of them until one of his information people passed him a snippet of a report, he wouldn’t feel comfortable about their situation until they were safe and settled back on the _Millenium Falcon_.

The intern who showed him to the right room looked too young but he held himself with a serenity that came from maturity and experience. He also moved quickly enough that Karrde didn’t feel as if he was wasting any time. He got the kid’s name—maybe to send a commendation for his professionalism, maybe to send a job offer that would make better use of him. Talon would know after his people’s investigation of the young man came back.

Fortunately, both Han and Leia looked more tired than anything else. That was more than he’d dared hope for.

“Talon,” Han said. “Good to see you.”

“You need to keep your people looking for us,” Leia said.

Of course. Buy them time before whoever took them realized they’d been found and kept after them.

She shook her head, and her eyes were bleak. “We might not be who we think we are.”

Even Han frowned, but he said to Karrde, “We were taken by some guy who could be a resurrected Grand Moff Tarkin. Looked like Tarkin, sounded like Tarkin, referenced stuff only Tarkin should know.”

“Was convinced he was Tarkin,” Leia said. “Had a lot of lackeys who believed it, too.”

Han patted her back. “Yeah, but why would that mean we might be replacements? He was the only one—”

She shook her head.

“Leia,” Han said slowly. “Who did we leave behind?”

“Nobody!” she insisted. “It wasn’t— It’s impossible. He _died_.”

“Who died?” Karrde asked gently, in case she needed the external prod.

A child screamed, “ _Tal_!”

Karrde turned and stepped for the door as a familiar four-year-old ran through. Satine slammed into him and clung to his leg.

Before he could respond to that, someone outright impossible fell through the doorway, yelling “Mom! Dad! You’ve got to get out of here!”

Satine ducked behind Karrde, still clinging, and he himself stared at what looked and sounded like a very relieved (and teenage) Anakin Solo.

“The Jedi hunters or whatever got distracted, so you have a little time, but—“

Blasterfire rang out, Not-Anakin barely ducked, and a large Kiffar grabbed the machine’s head from behind and tore it off. He threw the head down the hall—it clanged against something—tossed Not-Anakin further into the room, and went after the droid head.

“Hey!” Not-Anakin protested, scrambling for his feet. “Wait a—“

The sounds of battle ended as abruptly as they’d begun, and the Kiffar strolled back in, holding up a lightsaber hilt that looked like something Anakin might’ve made. “Any particular reason you don’t have a reboot circuit?”

Not-Anakin scowled and snatched for the weapon, but the Kiffar kept it from him with the light hands of a skilled pickpocket. Not-Anakin wore Jedi robes, but the Kiffar could’ve been any laidback spacer who lived in the fringe of society, despite his distinctive size, dreadlocks, yellow markings, and wrappings on his arms and hands.

The Kiffar gave no sign of noticing the tension in the room. He sprawled on the rolling stool that had come out from under the medicine table, apparently not caring that his vest fell open and revealed that he was carrying more equipment than was obvious at first glance, even while he managed to hide the lightsaber hilt somewhere.

“Reboot circuit,” he repeated, matter-of-factly. “Triggers when the crystal’s been disrupted and cycles it through a reboot. Can save your ass, against cortosis-weave armor. Also makes it less likely to blow up on you if you kriff the waterproofing.”

Not-Anakin stiffened. “That’s what’s wrong with you Jedi! Okay, great, you have the Master-Padawan bonds, but you don’t understand _family_. These are _my parents_! I couldn’t just leave them to—to whatever those Sith would do to them.”

The Kiffar even went _more_ still and relaxed, expression bland. Karrde’s neck prickled in warning.

But the man’s voice was quiet as he replied to Not-Anakin. “You’re right. Feeling my apprentice die when I was an adult was very different from experiencing my parents’ brutal murder when I was a child.”

Not-Anakin glared. “You didn’t even know your parents. You people took kids before they were three.”

He shrugged with a calm, calculating evaluation that acknowledged the young man wasn’t inclined to listen. “Not always.”

“Anakin!” another man said, ducking into the doorway.

The man was even bigger than the Kiffar, dressed in Jedi robes, and apparently Human. Only the top layer of his long brown hair was tied back.

He saw the Kiffar, blinked and fell back a half-step, then turned back to Not-Anakin. “What have you done?! We must leave immediately.”

“Oh, let him chat a bit,” the Kiffar said, with a carelessness that Karrde was pretty sure it was calculated. “Not as if he could do any more damage.”

“The treaty—“

“Is null, now, thanks to your Padawan, so attacks are about to come in hard. He swung at _cortosis_ , Qui-gon. What’s he gonna do with a droideka or a magna? Kriff, what are _you_ gonna do with a magna? They fight a lot like Tahl, so you’d probably enjoy that…”

Talon caught the ‘Tahl’. He was pretty sure that was the name of the intelligence agent who’d found Han and Leia.

“Not that magnas would give you the after-party you get with her,” the Kiffar said absently.

“Vos!” Qui-Gon snapped, giving the name of a Kiffar clan.

Satine, still behind Karrde’s leg, stiffened.

Vos just grinned. “Hey, you know _I_ don’t judge you for it. She’s a beautiful woman. You’re a beautiful man. It’s only natural that you’d end up making beautiful memories together.”

Karrde wasn’t sure if he should be concerned about the man’s recklessness or impressed by his ability to play sincere. His brazenness was too tactful to be as spontaneous as it felt.

“The Council would not like it,” Qui-Gon said. “They entrusted me with his training.”

Vos rolled his eyes. “Yeah, because we’re such lapdogs that we flee with our tails between our legs when they frown.”

Qui-Gon snorted, shook his head, and gripped Vos by the shoulder. Vos patted the hand and promptly hid a flinch; Karrde felt Satine cringe behind him, too.

Qui-Gon addressed the Solos. “The situation is too complex to explain in the time we have available. Those you escaped are still tracking you. I will help buy you time to escape, and my friends here will help you get out safely.”

He addressed Not-Anakin. “Stay and _listen_ to him. See what you learn.”

“Oh, Force,” Vos said good-naturedly, though Karrde heard whispers of annoyance and strain in it. “Guarantee I’ll have to sit on him to keep him here, why don’t you?”

Qui-Gon rolled his eyes and left.

Looking for all the galaxy as if he were relaxed and amused, Vos watched Not-Anakin, who seemed to grudgingly believe the threat to sit on him and disinclined to run without his lightsaber. After long enough passed for Qui-Gon to be even beyond Jedi senses, Vos’s poise shifted from chummy to tired.

Satine flung herself out from behind Karrde. “Quin!”

Not-Anakin jumped.

Vos froze for so little time Karrde only saw it because he was looking straight at him.

The Kiffar man and the four-year-old girl studied each other, and then Vos slipped from the stool into a crouch, both making himself smaller and putting himself at the child’s eye level. “I’m Quinlan, yeah. And you are?”

She whimpered and threw herself at him, pawing at his arm wrappings. He caught her so quickly that he was surely one of the rare Kiffar with psychometric ability.

“Satine!” Karrde said.

Vos smiled a little, though his forehead creased with a frown, and he settled back on the stool with the girl on his lap. “Your name’s Satine? Like Duchess Kryze?”

Satine nodded.

He frowned away from her, thinking for a second, then started unwrapping his hands. “Whatever you show me, you’ll be seeing, too. But it’s just a memory. It can’t hurt you, okay?”

She nodded again.

“Wait,” Not-Anakin cut in. “What are you talking about? Who’s Duchess…Cries?”

“Duchess Satine Kryze ruled Mandalore during the Clone Wars,” Vos said easily, then focused on the child on his lap, her tiny hands dwarfed in his.

“What is going on?!” Han said finally.

Leia was still staring at Not-Anakin with widened eyes.

Not-Anakin ran his hands through his hair. “It’s… Okay, you know how Callista came back in Cray’s body, and the emperor came back in that clone? Apparently, _somebody_ collected a DNA samples from a bunch of us, and there are a lot of Lightsiders and Darksiders that have been brought back…somehow. We’d been keeping a war between the two of us until Tarkin took _you_. I’m still not sure why. And then Master Qui-Gon said that wasn’t my concern, so I came to rescue you because nobody else was, but you’d already gotten away.”

Vos abruptly drew Satine close in a comforting hug as the girl cried silently. “For future reference,” he said quietly, “‘It isn’t your concern’ means someone else is taking care of it.”

Not-Anakin scowled at him. “If that’s what Master Qui-Gon meant, why didn’t he _say_ that?”

“Because you need to look beneath what words seem to mean to see the truth of what they’re actually saying,” Vos replied, and he directed his next words at Leia. “And while it’s possible that we’re all clones who only _think_ we are who we think we are, we’ve been running tests for a few years, now. A few old allies have confirmed the veracity of things we know that were never public record.”

Satine sniffled. Vos held her closer with a gentleness incongruous with the brashness he’d displayed with Qui-Gon.

“Will Mom be okay?” Satine asked.

“I don’t know,” Vos said frankly, soothingly stroking her head. “But she’s survived worse.”

“What?” Karrde said sharply. “What’s happened to Zora?”

The way Vos flexed his hands bespoke anger, but his expression and voice stayed bland. “Kidnapping and a Force inhibitor, but we’ll find her. Have to get out of here, first. Will you at least let us get you to safety?”

“What about the woman who helped us?” Han asked. “Tinté?”

Vos’s eyebrows rose.

“Someone you know?” Karrde asked. Between Satine’s outright recognition of the Kiffar and the way he was handling the child, he was inclined to give him the benefit of accepting what he said as _possible_ , though not necessarily plausible.

“Possibly,” he answered. “But I’d help, regardless. Do you know where she is?”

“She refused treatment,” Leia said. “I don’t know where she went from there. I’m not quite sure what her position was—she didn’t seem to be a prisoner _or_ an officer, but she’s pregnant, and Tarkin seemed quite annoyed about her.”

Vos nodded acknowledgement and thought for a moment. “Did she give you the name Tinté before or after you got here?”

“After,” Leia said. “She wouldn’t give us a name as we were escaping. Said it didn’t matter, for someone like her.”

Satine patted his arm, as if in comfort. The man looked down at her, sadness running through his face and body. “Kriff,” he muttered, then got up and handed Satine over to Anakin. “Protect the kid.”

He started for the door and paused, glancing back at Karrde and the Solos. “Follow if you’re coming.”

They all looked at each other awkwardly. Anakin didn’t want to leave his parents, Karrde didn’t want to leave them _or_ Satine, Satine didn’t want to leave Vos…

“You _are_ cleared to go,” Karrde pointed out to Han and Leia. “You were just waiting for your pickup.”

That seemed to decide Leia, who strode out after Vos—mostly out of a desire to figure out what exactly was going on, Karrde thought, not because they actually trusted…whoever they were. The rest of them followed, too.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sometimes Jedi Master Corran Horn considered just how furious everyone would be once they found out what was going on and how long he’d known about it.

Sometimes Jedi Master Corran Horn considered just how furious everyone would be once they found out what was going on and how long he’d known about it, but what option did he have? Too many would assume insanity or believe themselves an exception to the ‘No, seriously—we _cannot_ help them when they’re attacked by no-longer-dead Darksiders. Not yet.’

He’d seen a lot, in all his years as a Jedi Master. The Order he was part of had been through so many wars and betrayals and more. From what he’d seen of the no-longer-dead enemies of the old Order? All it would take was _one_ member of his Order, intervening to save a resurrected kid, and the new Order would be slaughtered before they could adapt.

Force, _he_ was getting nightmares from some of the shit he’d seen, and he was pretty sure his dad and Loony— _No, she’s Scout; they don’t know she survived and kept up with my dad_ —were blocking him from the worst of it.

Of course, now Han and Leia had been kidnapped, and everything was probably going to come out, soon.

Corran sighed and fingered the datacard in his pocket. He and Scout had been discreetly working various no-longer-dead people into position to be able to prevent said slaughter. It was a slow process, since they had to figure out how to arrange backgrounds and meetings that seemed natural rather than calculated.

Further complicating matters was that even the various old Order folks weren’t supposed to know where each other was placed, if it could be avoided. He suspected that was why _Scout_ had asked him to make this pickup for her.

There—the pub across the street had the overhang he’d been told to look for. He casually checked his surroundings and strolled that way.

“So why exactly are we getting this woman?” his wife asked, reminding him that he had company.

“It’s a favor for a friend.”

Mirax was quiet for a moment. “You’ve been doing a lot of favors, lately.”

He looked at her, and her Force presence revealed the concern that she was too experienced to let show in her mein. “They’re getting repaid.”

“That’s not what I meant.” She glanced over their location, double-checking the vulnerabilities, the security, the exits… “I know you’ve gotten mixed up in something, and I know there’s some reason that young woman knows more than I do. I just hope you trust me enough to tell me what’s going on _before_ it blows up in your face.”

That was part of why he’d brought her with him, actually. Yet another opportunity to see hints and start piecing things together, before everything he’d been dealing with for the past few years came out in the open.

“Thank you for trusting me,” he said, and he led her into _The Shaak and the Bantha_ to pick up one ‘Shylar’.

* * *

Khaleen was one of the few people who knew what Quinlan had done to his great-aunt Tinté and why. She must’ve spotted whoever Tholme had assigned as the undercover backup here, had figured a report of her situation would make its way to him.

_They want you to kill me for betraying you,_ the name admitted. Not much surprising in that. Quinlan could be impulsive, and some folks interpreted that as hotheaded. (Which sometimes amused him and made him want to ask if they’d met Aayla, his former Padawan, who had been appointed to the High Council. But there were reasons she’d ended up there, and the way she managed her reputation and mission schedule was one of them.)

So that part of Khaleen’s choice of name didn’t bother him so much.

No, it was the rest of what the name told him that made him want to haul Skorr to Naksía, who considered torture a form of art and communication. Not one that was a universally acceptable, necessary, or pertinent, but she and Thrawn had gotten along unsurprisingly well.

(Thinking of Thrawn, Quinlan needed to check that she was watching for him. He could think of a few people who could possibly recruit Thrawn from Palpatine, but Naksía had the most freedom of movement, right now, mostly because both Jedi Orders still didn’t know she existed.)

He wanted to do that because Khaleen’s choice of name also told Quinlan, _I wouldn’t mind if you killed me._

As if that wasn’t bad enough, he’d picked up a memory of outright abuse of Force Suggestion from Qui-Gon. (Filing charges on that was going to be _fantastic_ , though Quinlan was pretty sure that the victim had just played along rather than actually succumbed and would gladly testify. Bigger issue was going to be dealing with Qui-Gon’s ego and tendency to ignore and disregard any Council ruling he disliked and how he’d take that out on Obi-Wan, but mind-kriffing allies was kriffing stupid.)

And little Satine had shown him the memory of _Adi Gallia putting a Force-inhibitor collar on Siri_.

Why? He hadn’t a clue, but Siri hadn’t resisted. She’d even complied with the bullshit arrest, outright begging for the collar to be avoided. _“Please. I’m cooperating.”_

The abrupt interruption of a bond that strong with a child so young could _damage_ them. Satine seemed okay, but a normal four-year-old wouldn’t have been able to protect herself from that.

He’d noticed that the child’s mind held an information node, a data library that she could access when needed. It was unkind, and dangerous as kriff, but Siri had done that to her own daughter.

Siri had to be kriffing _desperate_.

But why?

Little Satine doubtless had something to do with it. Between using the name Zora and naming her daughter after Duchess Kryze, Siri had ensured that anyone who knew either of them at least mention the child to Obi-Wan, to give him means to find the child that was probably his.

Quinlan would almost think that Satine was the reason Siri went MIA the major battle that had led the old Order into splitting up their new praxeum, but… That wouldn’t have made her so desperate as to risk driving a child insane.

After that battle where Siri went MIA, Jedi Master Adi Gallia had turned in Siri’s lightsaber, saying she’d found it.

And Master Gallia had _collared_ Siri as soon as she’d found her, ensuring that none of her friends would hear her in the Force.

By the time Quinlan followed his sense of Khaleen to the closet where she’d either been taken or taken herself to, he was _almost_ hoping Skorr would still be there, ready to be torn to pieces.

Satine didn’t need to see that, though.

* * *

Vos breezed right on past all the nurses and the information desk, with the right mixture of confidence and intent for folks to overlook and let him, assuming he belonged wherever he was going. Karrde wondered if trying to recruit him would be worth the effort, considering his possible delusion of resurrection and whoever his current emloyer was.

“What about Tinté?” Han said.

“That’s where we’re headed.” Vos didn’t pause as he entered the stairwell and started down.

“What about Master Qui-Gon?” Anakin asked.

“He’s fine,” Vos answered. “Took a Sith Apprentice to kill him, and there’s nobody near Maul’s level here.” He paused, listening like Jedi sometimes did, then added, “Yet.”

“How do you know where the woman is?”

Had Anakin Solo always been his pushy? Karrde couldn’t remember.

The Kiffar’s calm snapped. “Because while you were trying to get yourself killed again, I had to—“

He visibly yanked himself back under control, but he exited the stairwell with more force than necessary. Ignoring employees’ protests, he strode straight into a utility hallway and knocked loudly on a closet door.

He waited a second, then tapped the entry panel while turning and taking a step away. “Out in one, Jade Eyes.”

He spoke and stood with a relaxed confidence that didn’t match the regret tugging at his eyes.

The woman who shuffled out of the closet had been beaten if not assaulted at least once in the past few hours—bruises were still forming—and her stomach swelled with what was probably the second trimester of pregnancy. Her torn clothing didn’t hide that she was well-endowed, and her angular face and striking green eyes would be beautiful when they weren’t battered. Her strawberry blond hair was a womp rat’s nest, and some of the cuts looked…odd. Particularly the ones around her face.

She spotted the lot of them immediately and tightened her grip on the doorjamb.

“Tinté!” Leia said. “What happened?”

Vos didn’t move or so much as glance back at the woman. “Skorr?” he asked quietly.

Tinté flinched, casting the Kiffar a wary glance that chilled Karrde.

The woman leaned forward a little, seeking Vos’s face. He turned his head enough for her to glimpse it, then she relaxed and shuffled out, limping badly.

The limp didn’t keep her from recoiling and falling against the wall when he reached for her. “Don’t read me!”

Vos had stilled upon her first move away, and at her words he stepped back and adjusted the wrappings on his hands and arms. “All right,” he said gently. “I won’t.”

She eyed him, skepticism clear on her face.

The Kiffar _looked_ perfectly trustworthy, without the excessive charm common in manipulative assholes, but Tinté was giving off too many warning signals for Karrde to trust the man.

Then Tinté shivered and hugged herself. “There’s a Jedi helping Tyrannus—something about repairing the Order, since it’s corrupted by attachments. She looks familiar, like she was important enough to be in the news sometimes. Maybe a councilor. They’re doing something with Darksider poisons, too. Skorr—”

“You don’t have to report now,” Vos interrupted. “Or ever.”

“Yes, I do,” she answered. “Otherwise, I’m just one more reason for them to toss you at deep cover missions without support and then blame you when you snap.”

“Kriff that.”

Stars above. They were both _spies_ , the type that spent years working into some horrific criminal organization, letting even their friends turn against them for the sake of the greater good. That made it all the more plausible that the good intentions Vos hinted at were genuine (still left Karrde leery, but the probability was better), and it put another spin on the woman’s reactions (and Tinté was definitely a code name).

She frowned at Vos. “Quinlan—“

“I don’t need to read you to know you’ve been tortured, Hentz.” He glanced over her, then looked away and added more quietly, “Or to see _how_.”

Karrde had heard the name Hentz before. Where?

Tinté—Hentz—rubbed her arms and shivered.

Vos sighed softly, which was consistent with him wanting either to sincerely help her or to make the witnesses think well of him. His hands flexed at his sides.

“So you _do_ know each other,” Leia said coolly.

“Tinté isn’t her name, obviously,” Karrde said. “He couldn’t do a positive ID from that.”

Memory struck. _’Booster can always use another mechanic—that is, if you aren’t a Hentz?’_

Jedi Master Corran Horn had asked that of Zora.

_Corran knows something about all this_.

Karrde looked at Satine. If she was here, the _Errant Venture_ was probably around, too, and Booster Terrik would probably know where his son-in-law was. Or, at least, be able to get in touch with him.

“Why don’t we go back to my ship?” he suggested. “It’s secure. We can…work out where we’re all going from there.”

More time together would provide Karrde with more data points for evaluating Vos. Karrde still didn’t feel comfortable leaving Tinté—or Hentz, or whoever she was (but there was possibly some truth in the ‘Hentz’)—alone with the Kiffar if he could discreetly avoid it.

Anakin gave him a sharp look, as if he actually _was_ Anakin and knew about the vornskyrs and ysalamiri and other useful but unusual items that Karrde had collected over the years.

Something caught the attention of all the Force-sensitives, but Leia and Anakin looked confused by it. Vos’s expression went flat, and Satine looked at the Kiffar with worry.

“Dooku?” asked Hentz.

“We have a window to get out,” Vos said, voice bland except for a drop of resignation.

She stared at Satine, then took Vos’s hands in hers and started unwrapping them.

He didn’t resist, though weariness tugged at his eyes. “You should all go.”

Han stepped forward. “Now, wait a minute—“

“We’ll meet up with you later.”

Hentz glanced at them. “Go. Get the children to safety.”

Han and Leia glanced suspiciously between Vos and Anakin, and Satine wriggled out of Anakin’s arms and hopped up into Karrde’s. _Kriff_ , she was heavier than she looked.

“Master Vos,” Anakin started.

“Qui-Gon told you to _listen_ to me, Anakin,” Vos reminded him. “Take Satine and go with Karrde.”

That knowledge of Karrde’s name was as good as confirmation that Vos was an intelligence agent.

“I’ve seen _war_ ,” Anakin insisted.

If Karrde’s suspicions were right, the kid wouldn’t be able to handle what was coming even if he actually _was_ Anakin Solo. “C’mon. I’m sure we can find your…Master Qui-Gon.”

“You’d _better_ bring Tinté back to us,” Han said, so he’d probably spotted at least some of the warning flags that Karrde had. “Or we’ll find you and make you regret it.”

Vos’s mild glance at him held more curiosity than anything else, and it wasn’t indignant at all. “You do that.”

Karrde was the last one to reach the door. Before he went through, Hentz wrapped Vos’s fingers around her neck, lifting her chin so his hands had better access.

“Just not my face,” she whispered. “Unless you need me to panic.”

Karrde pushed through and shut the door behind them before Anakin could press back in. “Wait, what was—“

“They’re buying us time to get away safely,” he said repressively.

Han and Leia looked uncomfortable, even a bit angry. They’d understood what they’d heard, too.

They understood, and that was why they hurried away.

“He’d _better_ bring her back,” Leia muttered.

Karrde remembered the conflicting signals that Hentz had given off, and how Vos had accepted and respected them all. “I think he will.”

 

* * *

Cracking the data system was taking too long.

Scout forced herself to breathe slowly, normally, which was a big enough part of the anxiety-reducing meditations that those could work pretty well for her, despite her minimal midichlorian count.

“So if you’re caught,” her partner-in-crime asked with a nonchalance that admitted how much the question mattered to her. “What happens?”

“They won’t do anything to you,” she told the woman. “You’re a Master; you were prominent and respected in your Order; and your tie to Skywalker puts you in Yoda’s lineage, which was known for being kinda crazy anyway, even before Dooku—um, before Skywalker-Vader. I guess that’s the part you know about.”

Mara Jade Skywalker’s steady green gaze said the effort at misdirection had failed.

Scout sighed and answered the question that had been asked. “Depends entirely on who gets the case. Everybody who knows I made Knight is in deep missions and wouldn’t be consulted, right now, so I’d be evaluated as a Padawan gone rogue…which has precedent for expulsion and criminal prosecution.”

“Convenient.”

For the folks who wanted to run the old Order as if their idealized memories were how things ‘should’ be? “Yeah.”

Particularly since those were the very people who Scount and Jade were cracking the databases to find. Data—it was all data, and they needed it to figure out what the frip was going on.

Also needed it to cover their asses before whoever was puppeting things got too many strings on _them_.

That was the nice thing about working with a trained spy who knew you were older than you looked. Jade had noticed some of the same presumed coincidences that Scout had, and she trusted Scout enough to believe her when she pointed out background details that made other things seem suspicious.

Like why the kriff had Tano and Offee been assigned to mission zones that overlapped? (She was _not_ looking forward to the fallout that was sure to come when they ran into each other.) And who had decided to send Halcyon to—

Her data reader pinged with the alert she’d set. She flinched at the sound, then mentally cursed the years that had robbed her of too much of her training. She kept up with what she could, but old Mandaloran tactics weren’t something a teenager from the Core could admit to knowing without getting a _lot_ of the wrong kind of attention, and…

Force, _Corran_ had recognized and remembered her. Using Mandaloran tactics would lead to _Mand’alor_ Boba Fett asking the various clans who’d been training Jedi. Someone in Skirata would remember her. She hadn’t always stayed at Kyrimorut, but she had remained a Jedi in a time when it was dangerous as kriff to be one. That made her memorable.

Okay, it was dangerous as kriff to be one now, too—and pieces were almost in place for the two ‘syndicates’ of resurrected persons to come out of the underworld and maneuver into the galaxy at large, and that…wouldn’t help matters, for Force-sensitives in general.

She sighed.

Her reader gave notice that she’d loaded all info from that particular crack, and she quickly tossed that datacard to Jade and hopped to the next database that she needed, setting up the codebreaker while Jade started copying the datacard they’d filled.

The information they needed had been splintered and split up, a few years ago, to keep any one person from seeing it all. That meant no single mole could destroy everyone, but it meant a clever mole in the right position and clout—like, say, a well-respected former member of the High Council—could meddle and damage things and get people re-killed without anyone piecing the pattern together.

Scout hoped she was wrong about Master Gallia. She _really_ wanted everything to end up being accidents caused by the data segregation.

But Scout had also run into Master Tachi on one of her visits with Corran, and her reaction…

Well, a resigned “Are you here to kill me?” wasn’t something that any Jedi expected to hear from an older one that they’d looked up to. (And if Scout had ever secretly longed for Siri to claim her as a Padawan, she would never admit it.)

Jedi didn’t expect to run into other ones’ children, either. Scout had fortunately met the kid in circumstances that could be ‘spun’ as a misunderstanding, insofar as the parentage was concerned, and she’d been careful to avoid any further encounters with the kid, so she wouldn’t lose that plausible deniability. Confirming that Masters Tachi and Kenobi had a child would create a risk of the wrong person finding out, whether by trawling through Scout’s mind or just picking up a stray thought.

This particular database was easier to get into, and Scout was tossing another datacard at Jade before she knew it.

Odd situations like Master Tachi’s were why they _had_ to collect this data, compiling missions and logs and reports that had been splintered and split up, a few years ago, to keep any one person from seeing it all. If the hints that Scout and Jade had noticed led to what they suspected they would find, then they had a lot of damage control to do.

Far too many folks would probably end up dead—or dead again—as it was.


End file.
